Chains
by SETI-fan
Summary: After the battle with Trigon, Raven wonders why she had the power to defeat him at last.


**My first experiment in writing for Teen Titans, so please be forgiving as I learn these characters and their voices. I know I'm late to the game, but I just fell in love with this show and have been obsessing over it for the last month or so. :)**

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The Titans took their time walking home through Jump City, relishing the warm sunlight after the fierce, red glow Trigon had induced. Around them, people hurried about their business, played with their friends or children in the park, and sat outside at the local restaurants, lost in food and conversation. From the look of things, no one had any memory of the day's events except for the team itself.

"Hard to believe an hour ago this whole place was stone and lava," Beast Boy said.

"That was a heck of a clean-up job, Raven," Cyborg agreed. "It's like nothing even happened. Everything's just the same as it was before."

"Well, almost everything," Beast Boy added, fingering Raven's white cape.

Raven pulled it out of his hand a bit half-heartedly and looked down at herself with a grunt of annoyance. She closed her eyes and familiar cobalt blue and black spread across her outfit.

"That's better," she said with a nod, then frowned again as she pulled a strand of long hair forward for examination. "Great. Now I need another haircut."

"Oh, not yet, please!" Starfire floated up beside her, hands clasped in excitement. "When we do the painting of the nails later, we can do the braiding of hair as well! I have not had hair other than my own to play with in a very long time!"

Raven's eye twitched slightly as she stared back. "We're still doing the nail thing?"

Cyborg stepped up to the rescue, putting a hand on Raven's shoulder. "Star, I think Raven's probably pretty tired from completely recreating reality today. How 'bout a rain check?"

Starfire blinked in confusion, looking up. "The sky appears to be clear, but if you wish me to fly around to ensure no bad weather is coming, I can certainly check."

"He means, how about saving that until after we all get a good night's sleep?" Robin explained.

Beast Boy stretched, yawning. "I know I'll be sleeping easier now that Old Smokey is dead."

"He's not dead," Raven said.

The others stopped and stared at her.

"You mean, after all that, he still survived?" Cyborg asked.

"He's immortal," Raven explained. "He can't die. But I've banished him from our dimension, and without my help, he's never coming back." Frowning, she held up one hand, forming a dark orb of energy around it. "There's one thing I don't understand," she said quietly, staring at the crackling energy. "I thought all my powers came from him. So how was I able to defeat him?"

"Looks to me like you have one heck of a power source yourself," Cyborg commented.

"I mean, your powers did come from him 'cause he's your dad, but that doesn't mean they aren't yours," Beast Boy said. "They're just basically the same as his. Except, you know, not based on evil."

"Perhaps," she agreed dubiously. "But all my life I was taught he couldn't be defeated. I tried to stand up to him when I was younger and I failed. Why did it work this time?"

"Because today it mattered most?" Starfire suggested.

Robin had been watching quietly with a distant look on his face. Now he spoke, low and thoughtfully. "When I was a kid, the circus had an animal trainer who said the way to control an elephant was to start when it was a baby and tie it up by one chain around its leg. The baby elephant can pull on that chain as hard as it wants, but it isn't strong enough to break it. Eventually, it stops trying. When the elephant grows up, the trainer can still use just that one little chain to restrain it, because the elephant still thinks it's too weak to do anything about it."

His eyes narrowed. "But one day, the elephant broke the chain, and realized how strong it really was. And the first thing it did was attack the trainer."

"Maybe Trigon knew you were the only one with the juice to defeat him, so he made sure _you_ didn't know that," Cyborg said.

Raven stared at the black energy around her hand again before letting it fade away.

Beast Boy leaned over to whisper to Cyborg, "I thought it was a bad idea to compare a girl to an elephant?"

"For you, I'd stick with that rule."

"Yeah." Beast Boy's face lit up again as they approached the shore and Titan Tower came into view. "Ah, home sweet home, and without Trigon's butt-print on it! It's like you hit a reset button."

His eyes widened and he spun toward Raven. "When you fixed things, how far did you reset time?"

"I don't know," she answered, puzzled. "I just kind of wished everything back how it was."

"Why?" Robin asked. "What's wrong?"

Beast Boy pulled at his hair in worry. "Yesterday I finally beat Cyborg's high score on Super Ninja Karate Masters 3! It took me weeks! I've gotta see if it's still on there!"

As Beast Boy turned into a hawk and glided toward the Tower, Cyborg grinned. "Rave, I will cook you anything you want if you erased his high score." He started running toward the water. "Yo, Star! Mind giving me a lift?"

As Starfire picked up Cyborg and flew off, Robin shook his head with a fond grin. "Definitely good to see everything back to normal."

"Robin," Raven said, "was that story about the elephant true?"

He looked over at her. "Yeah. I was really little when it happened, and my parents got me away to safety till it was over, but it was true."

Raven nodded, ruefully. "Guess my father should have used a bigger chain."

Robin turned fully toward her, face serious. "For what he wanted you to do, maybe. But after that happened at the circus, we got a new trainer. He used compassion and trust to raise his elephants. They performed because they liked working with him, not because they were afraid. He didn't need chains at all."

Robin gave her a smile, then turned and walked off toward the water.

Raven looked at her arms, blessedly free of any red glowing symbols, and let energy flicker around her fingers again. A bit of frustration clenched in her chest to see it back to the familiar black. If today's ordeal and transformation hadn't been enough to burn Trigon's legacy from her blood, she doubted anything ever would.

Still, perhaps Beast Boy was right, as strange a thought as that was. She had her father's powers, but that was where the similarity ended. For all her physical and emotional exhaustion, though her mind ached for the peace of meditation, her soul felt lighter than it ever had before, the heavy shackles of her destiny at last severed. The world really did appear no different, a day only briefly interrupted by an eclipse and continuing unfazed, but Raven realized that, in every way, she was seeing it with new eyes.

She took a breath of fresh air that tasted like the wake of a storm, then let the dark energy spread through her entire body.

Shifting into her bird-like soul-self, Raven swooped down and caught Robin by the shoulders, his surprised laugh a welcome balm against the day's memories as she flew them both back home.


End file.
